PHILLIMON MHLANGA IN VICTORIA FALLS
The CEO Africa Roundtable yesterday warned that Zimbabwe’s economic outlook is ‘extraordinarily uncertain’ and called for astute leadership to steer the country out of a potential crisis especially as it gears for the 2023 elections.
Speaking at the CEO Africa Roundtable currently underway in Victoria Falls, the grouping’s board chairman Oswell Binha said the economic outlook was marred with uncertainty due to several factors including supply chain disruptions, weak economic conditions and climate change.
“The economic outlook has never been more uncertain,” he said. “We are faced with long-term challenges like the Environment, Social and Governance agenda with pressing issues such as climate change, reduction in crop yields, and supply chain, which is endangering businesses and other serving communities.”
The CEO Africa Roundtable runs up to Saturday.
Binha said the global community was also faced with the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war that has affected the economy in several countries that rely on the two warring countries for goods and services.
“As you know, global tensions have escalated due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Beyond the suffering and the humanitarian crisis from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the entire global economy continues to feel the effects of slower growth and faster inflation,” Binha said.
“We anticipate increased prices for commodities like food and energy, which will further drive inflation, eroding the value of incomes and weighing on asset values, tightening financial conditions, and encouraging capital outflows from emerging markets.”
Binha called for “astute leadership” for local companies to extricate themselves from economic woes.
“It is my conviction that, like many developmental states, Zimbabwe needs futuristic leadership whose leadership horizon would spin generations. I believe in ideal leadership, broad issues of collective responsibility, issue-based engagement, human, food and national security, hard, honest work and a culture of Ubuntu becoming central,” he said.
The executive warned the economy would likely suffer from severe headwinds as the country approaches 2023 harmonised elections.
“We have invented politics that life in Zimbabwe will catch a cold when it sneezes. Our politics has perennially divided Zimbabwean citizens on political lines,” he said, adding it was “backward, destructive, and retrogressive”.
“As we now inch into 2023 harmonised elections, this august gathering has started shivering because of the risks associated with market disturbances, industrial production and asset destruction. We call on all and sundry to exercise restraint to guarantee our nation’s peace and tranquillity during this period. It is indeed a leadership phenomenon,” Binha said.
